NSW minister’s bid for football stadium shift
NSW Tourism and Investment Minister Stuart Ayres has been lobbying ministerial colleagues to ditch the government’s $810m plan to revamp Sydney’s ANZ Stadium — the plan he and Premier Gladys Berejiklian took to the March state election — in favour of building a new stadium in his seat of Penrith.
The Australian has established from several sources that Mr Ayres, who was taken out of the sport portfolio by Ms Berejiklian after the March state election, has lobbied fellow ministers and NRL figures in a bid to attempt to kill the proposed $810m redevelopment.
Mr Ayres, who has always been close to the trustees on the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, including 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones, helped shepherd through the ongoing, controversial $729m knockdown and rebuild of Sydney Football Stadium in Sydney’s east. Sydney Football Stadium is managed by the SCG Trust.
The NRL has threatened to take the grand final out of Sydney if ANZ Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park at Homebush is not rebuilt as a rectangular stadium, as the government plans.
Despite Mr Ayres’ efforts The Australian understands current Sports Minister John Sidoti, who has recently stood aside pending an ICAC investigation, got the business case for the ANZ rebuild through the government’s expenditure review committee.
Mr Ayres, who has long spoken about the need for a new outer western Sydney stadium, declined to comment yesterday.
Several sources have told The Australian Mr Ayres, who is the member for Penrith, a seat he won by 1100 votes, has been lobbying to divert the ANZ funds to Penrith. The government, as part of a $2bn stadium spending program, has spent $360m building the new Bankwest stadium at Parramatta, which has regularly been filled this year. Acting Sports Minister Geoff Lee said: “There has been no change to the government’s stadium policy.”
The Australian revealed yesterday Mr Ayres granted a $350,000 low-interest loan to his local hockey association two weeks out from the caretaker period at the March election — and wrote to his successor in June asking him to write off the loan.
The loan, made in the final days of Mr Ayres’s tenure as the state’s sports minister, followed a $600,000 grant Mr Ayres made to the same Nepean Hockey Association two years earlier.
The Australian also revealed there were warnings from the state’s bureaucracy about a “reputational risk” to the government caused by a $12m grant the Penrith Panthers Leagues Club received for a community and sports centre while Mr Ayres was sports minister.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/na...t/news-story/31111d317c9a6a4dcbbca268b87e62fc
